LOL read this for a laugh!

Bam Bam

But the higher ups thought that B20 was heading south towards Saudi, as per there plans. In fact they headed towarsa Syria,

The higher ups could have sent as many planes and helis as they wanted they would never have found them.

Also B20 radios were ****ed so they couldn't really contact a plane of heli if they wanted to.

bk

Philistine wrote:

Regardless of how the brittish army measures up to the us army, neither fair well compared with the foriegn legion. According to a report by a legionaire several years ago (I'll post the article later if I can find it) while on a NATO exercise in Canada, he claimed that the brittish and american armies were only as good as their logistics. ie. without their hi-tech equipment (laser rangefinders, gps, ground radars etc...) and their large mobile kitchen facilities serving 3 square meals a day, that they could not last and fight on the ground for any lenght of time. This is where he claimed that the legion, who only used and ate what they could carry, surpassed all others as a fighting force.

In that article he was comparing regular US and British forces to the Legion, not to British and US SF units. British and US SF units would be just as self sufficient, if not more so then the Legion * and while they do get to play with all the latest toys, they pride themselves on being able to fight in any condition, without support.

You are right the regular US army (the British far less) are very reliant on their technology and logistics, but then it has always been said that it is logistics that win and lose wars. It was that logistics and technology that allowed them to so quickly and soundly defeat the Iraqi army.

It is all fine and good saying that without their technology that they would be lost, but the point is that they do have excellent technology and logistics and in reality the Legionare himself pointed out that if it had been a real war instead of an exercise, that the US Marines would simply have called in air support which would have made quick work of the Legionares.

However The US has come to realise that while all the technology is great for winning big wars, you still need good basic soldering in order to fight guerilla warfare in urban areas, etc. That is why the US is significantly expanding their SF units.

* BTW The Legion actually has it's own commando and SF units. The Legion itself isn't really a SF force, rather it is a very well trained army.

elvis jaffacake

Flying wrote:

Irish Army ranger are not in that league at all they are merely on par with say the pathfinders at most of the Parachute regiment

the main difference between the pathfinders and the SAS is that the pathfinders don't do the "black role" side of things, virtually everything else is identical, down to using the same weapons...the wing do both roles and would be the equivelent of the SAS, and very good they are at it too, this country is damn lucky some smart people back when the wing was being formed, put the effort in to give us a top quality SF unit, there are more then a few nations around that would give their eye teeth to have a unit of that quality.


btw, you should read up on the rescue mission they did in Liberia, in 1 they extracted 40 people with out firing a round....if thats not top notch, I don't know what is


apologies for the necropost.:o

Manic Moran

One good comment I read...

"Americans cheat. They insist on calling in an airstrike when any right-thinking fighting man would use a hand-grenade"

Well, if it works...

NTM

elvis jaffacake

Manic Moran wrote:

One good comment I read...

"Americans cheat. They insist on calling in an airstrike when any right-thinking fighting man would use a hand-grenade"

Well, if it works...

NTM

LOL, true

AbusesToilets

I think (always a dubious statement) that if you're talking about the best unit etc. then you have to look at who is the most capable resource-wise,and who is the most active, generally speaking. So taking that into consideration IMO it would have to be CAG/Delta.No individual unit in SOF,in any country, gets more funding than them and they are on near constant deployment downrange.
And i had to chuckle at a comment in the above mentioned forum about the Brits always cleaning up US's mess.Eh,wasn't it the Brits who went in and messed up Iraq in the first place? :rolleyes:

elvis jaffacake

I certainly did not mean to get in to the whole whos number 1 thing, far far from it, just trying to correct a factual mistake on hs part;)